Black widow spiders travel to UK

Adam Khor

I am very familiar with these spiders; have caught hundreds of them and never been bitten, fortunately. They are rather shy animals and I've seen them play dead, hoping to make me lose interest

Here's the news:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-14493664

Oh! And an interesting bit of trivia; although the black widow spider (Latrodectus mactans) is the best known, there are also brown widows (Latrodectus geometricus, I've caught these too):

...white widows (Latrodectus pallidus)...

...red widows (Latrodectus bishopi)...

... thirteen-spotted widows (Latrodectus tredecimguttatus)...

...and last but not least, the Hawaiian Happy Face spider (Theridion grallator) which, although harmless to humans and not a true widow spider, belongs to the same family:

steddyeddy

Are all the species that have made it to the uk harmless Adam?

Adam Khor

steddyeddy wrote: »

Are all the species that have made it to the uk harmless Adam?

To my knowledge the species that has appeared in the UK is the black widow L. mactans, which is unfortunately the deadliest of the bunch. Fortunately, it's also fairly easy to recognize.

Sid_Justice

how / where / what capacity were you catching them? are you able to talk about this hobby / job here, sounds interesting.

Adam Khor

Sid_Justice wrote: »

how / where / what capacity were you catching them? are you able to talk about this hobby / job here, sounds interesting.

Well, more than a hobby, it's a necessary thing to do. See I live in a region famous for its abundant black widow spiders. The house where I used to live had a metal fence which was very popular with spiders as a place to spin their webs and catch insects. Obviously, there was always the risk of someone sticking their fingers accidentally in a web and getting bitten by one of the spiders, as well as the possibility of the spiders moving inside the house.

Most people kills the spiders with bug spray and burns the egg sacs, but I am a spider lover so I told my father not to do so, and instead I took it as my duty to capture the spiders one by one, getting them in jars and taking them away to unhabited places, where I would release them.
Of course everyone told me that I was insane, that one bite from a black widow could potentially be fatal and what not, but the fun thing is, the spiders never tried to bite me. Not even once. Most of them would retreat to the deepest part of the web (black widows spin tridimensional webs, not flat ones like garden spiders). When I forced them out using a small wooden stick, they would often panic and throw themselves to the floor, and pretend to be dead, hoping that I would lose interest. As weird as it may seem, these deadly thingies were always much more timid than other, harmless spiders.

So there... I have also caught centipedes, plenty of scorpions, a tarantula and even snakes. Never been bitten by any of them. Maybe they know I'm trying to save their skin

Sid_Justice

is this in America?

Adam Khor

Sid_Justice wrote: »

is this in America?

Yep.

recedite

Those happy face spiders look fantastic:)